Please put down some questions, ideas, prompts for Howard Rheingold and Cory Ondrejka here:
Participation Gap
- At the press conference announcing the Macarthur Foundation's new digital media and learning initiative, Jonathan Fanton said, "There is much good to be gained from cross-cultural education. Digital space is more equal and respectful of difference." But Henry Jenkins noted a bit later that, "We've moved from the Digital Divide to the Participation Gap. Between those of who have regular access and those who don't." What are your thoughts on this participation gap, and what role can Second Life play in closing it?
- When looking at usage hours SL is about belanced between the genders. Does SL show a promise of a more inclusive participatory culture?
- In MUDs, one could argue that value was placed upon writing abilities and expression by text because of the nature of the medium. Among participants in SL, what are the expressive skill sets that are most valued? Is that value a selected for by the highly visual nature of SL?
- What about other possible measures of diversity (race, class, education), and what sorts of norms exist that enable (or constrain) participation? Secondly, what sorts of public forums exist in SL, what issues do they address, who gets to participate in them, and who has the power to develop them? Furthermore, if presence is now defined (at least in part) in terms of virtual bodies, where are 'rights' located?
- Why should we separate out discussions of access to computers and broadband and of participatory culture on SL?
SL & Community
- Where are the boundaries/interactions between SL and RL? How may the communities be the same, different?
- How can social relations in SL improve social relations in RL?
- “Never before have I been so excited to hang with others in a community—I thought the blogosphere had kinship, wow I was wrong. People who use SL, and more importantly, people who are IN there, living, working, collaborating, developing. It’s got such a workin’ man vibe, beyond the “I read your blog!” It’s “I love your designs!” or “I buy your products!”” -- Resident Spin Martin [link] I wonder about your thoughts on being "IN there" means for the sense of community. How this relates to things like sense of presence in the avatar mediated 3D of SL etc.
- A few of us heard Chris Anderson talk about the Long Tail today at Stanford. Does SL present a coherent "world" for users, or something more like a patchwork of niches? Speaking more broadly, what kind of impact do you think the long tail perspective (i.e. the growing power of niches and the demise of the blockbuster...and the canon?) will have on cultural production? Does SL push the envelope as a cultural space or recapitulate the kinds of cultural production we're used to in the "real" world?
SL & Learning
- Thomas & Brown suggest that virtual worlds like SL are places where students may learn to innovate within concetually blended spaces [link]: "The spaces that virtual worlds offer provide a radical break from traditional spaces of educational practice... Rather than focusing attention on the direct transmission of knowledge, this kind of learning addresses a much wider and much deeper set of issues. If students are to be adequately prepared for the 21st century, they will need to learn how to approach situations with flexibility and they will need to be able to treat new situations as blended spaces, not only managing the dynamism and flux, but embracing them, using them, and accounting for them within their own thought processes." What and how are people learning in SL?
Meta Data
- SL has very little meta layer. Would you envision that the 2D web should deliver this or should it be built into SL?
Economy
- With the increasing amount of RL companies entering the SL economy is bound to be further disrupted. How do you envision the state of the economy in Nov. 2007assuming uninterrupted growth?
- What role will RL companies play in a time to come when the news that company X setting up in SL is no longer getting headlines?
- Is there a role for regulation in SL? What structures are in place (or not) for this? Are they just an extension of RL (say, in terms of contract and property law), or how may they be different?
- What is the role of 'free labor'?
For more info on Howard: http://www.rheingold.com
and
Cory: http://lindenlab.com/management
Notes on the discussion
Much discussion about the characteristics of SL - that it is cool and different.
Distinction: world versus community - SL as a world, not a community (Howard)
Second Life, though, as an incoherent experience of collisions (of cultures ...) (Cory)
Cory emphasizes innovation in SL as its distinguishing feature - people regularly try to make things. Old distinction between creator and consumer. And is building objects the metric for creativity - why not making relationships/connections/extensions out into "real life".
Web experience generally is one of fragmented communities, Cory claims - with little opportunity for them to intersect - whereas the physical architecture of SL encourages intersection. Cory says SL is meant to be cosmopolitan, a city, Manhattan/NYC, rather than Orange County.
Is there not some fuzziness here over notions of group, community, world, resident, (on-line) society?
Just how different is this "world" (from "real" life)? In what ways is it not just an extension of social networking? Not a "second life" but an opportunity to do certain things we want to do in everyday life more easily, in a more engaging way ...
Is digital amplification the main feature of SL?
Howard - there is a freedom of space and association. EG a diasporic group can reconstitute itself in SL, when this would be impossible in real life, and their space could look familiar and comforting. A sense of "thereness", of proximity? Interactions, of a more amplified and more engaging richness than lower bandwidth web and other media experiences, are easy and cheap - Cory emphasizes easy cheap entrepreneurial activity in the hands of amateurs.
Governance in SL by Linden Labs - names, property space, computing power, currency and in-world transactions using Linden dollars, scripting code.
